6 held in DACA protest outside Paxton’s office

Six protesters, including the head of Austin’s education union, were detained in front of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office Tuesday after refusing to move away from the building doors in a show of support for an immigration program that Paxton wants gone.

State troopers removed the protesters — three of them from Austin, three from Houston — from the building and brought them inside. Troopers did not say whether the protesters would be ticketed, jailed or let off with a warning.

The protesters said they had planned to get arrested by sitting in front of the doors with linked arms as a crowd of about 140 people rallied in support.

In late June, Paxton and GOP officials from nine other states issued a letter threatening to sue the Trump administration unless it did away with the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, also known as DACA. The program offers protection from deportation to qualifying people living in the U.S. illegally who were brought to the country as children.

Last week, Austin Mayor Steve Adler and Travis County Judge Sarah Eckhardt joined nine other elected officials across Texas to condemn Paxton’s demand to rescind DACA.

The six protesters all worked with education or immigration rights organizations. Ken Zarifis, 53, president of the Austin school district’s union, was one of those detained Tuesday.

The other protesters detained are Patrick Harvey, 63, of Austin, with Texas State Teachers Association; Chris Wager Saldívar, 22, of Houston, with United We Dream; Alice Serna-McDougald, 61, of Houston; Montserrat Garibay, 38, with Education Austin; and Rachel Hassell, 29, of Houston, United We Dream.

“A lot of kids need support, and many of them need DACA,” Zarifis said.

Most employees left a different way at the end of the work day.